LibraryThing Deep Dive: The Best of Tags

LibraryThing is a book cataloguing/social networking site for nerdy lovers of data. If you’re the kind of person who likes to record all the individual books you own, where you bought them, where they’re stored, how much each one weighs (not joking), their exact covers, what percentage of authors you read are dead/alive, male/female, etc., you’ll love this place. It is your home.

One of my favorite aspects of the site is the ability to tag a book once you add it to your virtual collection. Tags can be anything you want, from the year you purchased the book to descriptive metaphors of exactly how painful the book was to read. I generally stick to tagging books by their genres, but I can lose ridiculous amounts of time exploring how other users have tagged some of my favorite books. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the minds of other readers, and can be an effective starting point for conversations about the work. Let’s take a look at five examples: